


Reciprocating Ciphers

by momebie (katilara)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-21
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rise and fall of stubborn feelings in words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reciprocating Ciphers

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan you should. Partially because it's beautiful and partially because it's his style I've aped for this.

**lambent – _adj_. softly bright or radiant**

Finally, on the deck of the Coast Guard's boat, you were the only one who didn't have a hundred questions to ask me. The humans swarmed around us: demanding answers, cajoling me with warm clothes and food, going about their business. You merely sat across from me—using your bent knees to hold up your elbows—and projected such an overwhelming mood of calm that I don't know how I didn't give in to my exhaustion and fall asleep right there.

After a time everything washed into a drone and it was all I could do to focus on the corners of your mouth. When you spoke to the CIA agents it was short and terse. Your lips were thin, your jaw set. However, the corners of your mouth perked upward ever so slightly. Combined with the hazy glow from the search lights and the salt spray and my own tired eyes it made you seem impish.

That is still how I see you, even when we're at each other's throats. In turns in my memory you are serious and open and warm. You are the embodiment of some private joke whose punchline I've long forgotten.

 **supposititious – _adj_. imaginary**

It was unseasonably cold. You shrugged on an extra sweater even as you chided me for my turtleneck. If you'd just left your hand on my forearm I would have let you chide me for the rest of time.

When you pulled away I couldn't be sure if your fingers had actually lingered or if time had just slowed. The places where they'd rested burned more deeply than all of my other scars combined.

 **mutatis mutandis – _adv_. with the respective differences having been considered**

Ours is the first relationship that I could count in arguments. This doesn't mean, as you'd sarcastically assume, that I think we spent all of our time arguing. What it actually means is that I can pinpoint all the times which we didn't argue even though we wanted to. There were fights plural instead of a fight singular.

 **roué – _n_. a man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure**

The first time you called me a rake we were with Raven and I laughed. I couldn't help it. The word rolled off your tongue in the most curious, most strangled way. You thought I was acknowledging the accusation when in reality I was thinking that maybe, in spite of everything, you didn't know me at all. Up to that point my life had been devoted to a pleasure of a sort, but it wasn't sensual, and it certainly wasn't easy to come by.

The second time you used the word we were alone and I squashed my mirth in favor of something a little stronger. This time there was no smirk on your kiss-swollen lips and no accusation in your half-lidded eyes. If you hadn't known me before you would now. I wrapped your tie around my fist and used it to tether you to the wall as I did the things I'd been wanting to do to you for weeks.

Later it was you who laughed around small huffs of breath, running your fingers through sweat-curled hair and probing my mind to see if I would be up for round two.

 **dreadnought – _n_. one that is among the largest and most powerful of its kind**

It was untrue of you to tell me that I could develop a power that you couldn't match. For one thing, our powers aren't equal or reciprocal. For another, my power will always be beholden to you, because you're the one who knocked it loose. You're the one who reminded me that there were things worth fighting for inside of me. That I no longer needed to merely react to the world around me.

My power, strong as it may become, will always take a knee in deference to you.

 **chasten – _v_. to cause to be more humble or restrained**

I have always burned hot. I run—present tense because I know it's still true—on revenge and violence and lust and need. You ran—past tense because I don't know if it's still true—on logic and calm and cooperation. I fully intended to burn you up, but instead you cooled me down. Not forever, but I think we knew from the beginning that the uneasy truce would only work for so long.

That knowledge didn't make the last time any easier. It doesn't make me forget about the slow circles you traced at the small of my back as you reined me in.

 **efficacious – _adj_. having the power to produce the desired effect**

You read minds, but somehow I was the one who always knew what people needed. For that I was reprimanded. More than once during a scolding I searched your eyes for mirth and found none. I turned that around on you easily enough.

Underneath all of your good intentions and liberal convictions you were still just a vain and eager boy. You happily ate up my pretty words and proudly bore the scars of all those times I pushed the boundaries. My own intentions strained against you and you warped beneath my fingers. When it came down to it you did exactly what I wanted you to do. There was no room in my future, in _the_ future, for sharing my thoughts and my wishes and my body. If I wanted to keep fighting I needed every part of myself to be strong. I hope that before the end I was able to convince the children of that as well.

What was the point of forcing us to train if you weren't going to prepare us for the difficult things that were coming? What was the point of keeping me around if you weren't planning to use every part of me to get what you wanted?

 **temporize – _v_. to draw out discussions or negotiations so as to gain time**

If I'd thought it would have stopped time I would have kept talking. There on the beach with the sun and the eyes of the world beating down on us, I would have dug my heels into the sand and opened my mouth and let anything and everything fall out. There are days when I wish that I could have filibustered our lives. But you were heavy and I was afraid and it was easier to walk away than it was to carry on.

In my dreams I'm still talking.

 **expatriate – _n_. a person who has renounced his or her native country**

That night in the water I had found a home in you. There was an echo in the open spaces of the world letting me know that I wasn't alone. I know the door is still open should I choose to return, so I've exiled myself away from the safety of your voice in my mind. Emma thinks in words that are clipped and cold, but they only serve to fill my resolve. I've taken up this mantle for all of our sakes, and I refuse to ever again settle for something as comfortable as home.


End file.
